#nostalgia reading

[propertyofkylar]

also bought a big ass pokemon adventures collectors edition because i am so normal about pokemon (lies)

[danielstalter]

Egg Monsters from Mars was a refreshingly weird Goosebumps book. It had a good balance of the ridiculous and the grotesque. The pacing was solid and Stine avoided his most familiar tropes. The weakest point was its characters. Dana was a fine protagonist, but the plot relied on a villain with extremely questionable logic. I could also point out a few questionable choices made by Dana’s parents. There was a good steady build-up to the climax, even with the villain logic severely lacking. I was left wanting to know more about what the egg monsters were and what their true intent was. That said, I was also happy that there wasn’t a final-chapter infodump to try and over-explain everything. Stine’s tendency to infodump can really kill the magic; Say Cheese and Die is probably the most egregious example of this. Even though it left me wanting more, it was nice to see Egg Monsters from Mars avoid falling into that trap. I’ve said it before and I will keep saying it so long as I write these reviews: the best Goosebumps books are the ones that aren’t afraid to get weird. Egg Monsters not only embraced the weird, but it also delivered what might be the most disturbing ending I’ve come across in this series. I can’t say more without major spoilers, but you can rest assured that I have some thoughts to share below the jump.

Score: 3.5

My full review with memes, snark, and spoilers can be found here: https://www.danstalter.com/egg-monsters-from-mars/

[the-forest-library]

“You should be at the club.” No, I should be at the scholastic book fair.

[lone-nyctophile]

Poetry is what helps me remember that even in my fragments, I am whole.

- Jennifer Huang

[lucidloving]

Girlpool—Before the World Was Big // memorial bench quoting Toni Morrison's Sula // @inanotherunivrse // Iain S. Thomas, I Wrote This For You // Zadie Smith, Swing Time // Fall Out Boy—The Kids Aren't Alright // Audrey Emmett // Mikko Harvey, "For M" // Mahmoud Darwish, Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982 (tr. Ibrahim Muhawi) // Langston Hughes, "Poem"

[ai-dream]

[prokopetz]

It's actually kind of striking how tightly wedded most major genres of tabletop RPGs are to the decades when they were popularised.

Trad fantasy tabletop RPGs – even those that aren't positioned as revivalist – are so intent on emulating the sword and sorcery literature of the 1970s that the only reason they don't come off as quaintly nostalgic is because nobody reads sword and sorcery anymore.

Cyberpunk tabletop RPGs are, at this point, essentially an exercise in retrofuturism, endlessly polishing a vision of what people in the 1980s thought the year 2015 would look like.

Urban fantasy tabletop RPGs might include smartphones and electric cars in their equipment tables and mention 9/11 in their lore chapters, but culturally and aesthetically, most of them are taking place in a world where the 1990s never ended.

I don't mean this as a criticism – I'm just fascinated with how this tendency is so strong that, for example, a brand new urban fantasy RPG written in the year 2024 is liable to end up being a 1990s period piece at heart even when that was 100% not the author's intention, simply through the inertia of the medium's well-established tropes.

I'm mostly curious what the characteristic tabletop RPG genre of the 2020s is going to end up being thirty or forty years from now, and I hope I live long enough to find out!

[happyheidi]

[ego-sum-deus-fractus]

"Grief only exists where love lived first"

──── ୨୧ ────

From “Biography of Mothers” by Sarah LeWarn, published in Volume Three of Winter Tangerine Review // Charles Dickens, Great Expectations // Clarice Lispector // Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy // The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry // Rune Lazuli // Heidi Priebe, As Long As Their Is Love, There Will Be Grief // Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood // Margaret Atwood // Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.

[retrogamingblog2]

Let's Find Pokemon

Illustrated by Kazunori Aihara

[digitalmemoriez]

✫･ﾟ*.2005･ﾟ✫*.

[thisischeri]

Power Mac G3, Apple, Blue and White, 1999

instagram: cheri.png

[lone-nyctophile]

Instead of new branches, I might grow deeper roots.

-David Kishik

[ai-dream]

[nephritebabie]

>.<

[onlyforhearts]

Drowning actually, but won’t scream for help.